Hackers mock collider computer security

GENEVA, Switzerland, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Hackers put a damper on celebrations of the Large Hadron Collider's successful start-up in Geneva, Switzerland, leaving a mocking message on its Web site.

The computer hackers, calling themselves the Greek Security Team, created an unauthorized Web page on a site associated with the collider calling its security technicians "schoolkids" but indicating they weren't interested in disrupting the experiment, The Times of London reported Saturday.

The Web site was open to scientists not associated with the LHC, which passed its first test this week by firing protons at nearly the speed of light. In their message, the hackers claimed they were "one step away" from derailing the experiment, but officials scoffed at that notion, The Times said.

James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN, the European Laboratory for Network Collision, home of the LHC, told the newspaper: "We don't know who they were but there seems to be no harm done. It appears to be people who want to make a point that CERN was hackable."

The LHC is designed to produce beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine -- and around 30 times more intense -- when it reaches design performance, expected by 2010.